40th AOP Photographer Awards
2025 finalist

I’ve spent time working with British boxer Vivien Parsons over several sessions, documenting the pace, pressure and personal process of a young athlete with Olympic ambitions. What began as a straightforward project has grown into something layered, something about identity, integrity, and what it means to be on the way to greatness while still very much a work in progress. I'm approaching this project like I train, intuitively, in the moment, with discipline but without rigidity. Natural light. Muted tones. Fast lenses. Imperfect angles. The point isn’t to polish. It’s to reveal. To allow the natural power of her effort, vulnerability, and presence to come through without staging it.

I’ve spent years unlearning the impulse to control everything in frame. Instead, I give space to the unexpected, to shadows across her face, half-blurred gloves in motion, to emotion that doesn’t need direction. In an era where AI can generate hyper-stylised boxing scenes in seconds, I’m interested in what can’t be replicated. Atmosphere. Tension. That stillness just before a storm of movement. The tiny details that only emerge when you’re really there.